10 Web Design Tools To Explore in 2016.

• by Mark-Anthony
• in Blog EdXD
• posted January 3, 2016

Every web designer has their go-to collection of apps and web design tools that form their ideal workflow. For many years I’ve used Adobe’s Creative Suite Apps and consistently use Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign for the majority of my work. I stuck with Adobe products out of circumstance and partly because when I studied graphic design, I mostly learned digital design using Adobe’s products; aside from Quark Xpress and Macromedia… Yup, I just aged myself. However, now that I’ve been a design instructor for nearly 10 years I’ve become a bit exhausted with Adobe’s frequent changes to their Creative Cloud applications and inconsistent application development and support. It’s really difficult keeping up with all of Adobe’s frequent version updates and rebranding of their design tools, as it puts a strain on developing curriculum and gets in the way of teaching actual design principals to my students. This year I’ve made an effort to explore other design alternatives. I’ve mostly looked into open source solutions but I’ve also found some really great design tools that are affordable and provide great support and development. Some of these tools have become more popular over the past couple of years while others may not be well known. In this article, I’ve listed 10 web design tools that I want to explore throughout the year. Hopefully some of these tools will become staples in my design tool kit and I can begin using them within my design instruction.

Hype

Hype Professional is the most advanced app for creating stunning animated and interactive web content.

Affinity

Affinity is the new name in high quality, next-generation design apps for professionals. Conceived and developed by a passionate team of artists and programmers, Affinity gives designers exactly what they need for the highest quality artwork, photos and designs—accurate, high quality tools in fast, innovative, reliable apps with flair.

Avocode

The smartest way to share designs, export assets and collaborate with your team.

Pixate

Pixate generates 100% native prototypes, so you can experience your ideas on device as if they’re completely real.

InVision

Get high-fidelity in under 5 minutes. Upload your design files and add animations, gestures, and transitions to transform your static screens into clickable, interactive prototypes.

The Grid

The Grid harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to take everything you throw at it – videos, images, text, urls and more – and automatically shape them into a custom website unique to you.

Foundation for Emails

Quickly create responsive HTML emails that work on any device & client. Even Outlook.

Typegenius

Find the perfect font combo for your next project.

Atom

Atom is a text editor that’s modern, approachable, yet hackable to the core—a tool you can customize to do anything but also use productively without ever touching a config file.

Coolors

Color scheme generator.